Reflection in a Dead Diamond Review: James Bond-like Eurospy Genre Pastiche is the Rarest of Gems

Reflection in a Dead Diamond

Sometimes, movies don’t have to make a ton of sense to make sense. Beginning in the late ‘60s, with camp masterpieces like Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik (aka, the best film of all time), cinemagoers of a certain persuasion were treated to a wave of European genre films that prioritised kaleidoscopic pop visuals over anything resembling a coherent narrative. This tendency only intensified in the decades that followed: first through the stylistic …

Reflection in a Dead Diamond Review: James Bond-like Eurospy Genre Pastiche is the Rarest of Gems

"It is false to say that the screen is incapable of putting us ‘in the presence of’ the actor," the great French philosopher André Bazin wrote in 1967. "It does so in the same way as a mirror — one must agree that the mirror relays the presence of the person reflected in it - but it is a mirror with a delayed reflection, the tin foil of which retains the image."